American Airlines pilots - Dra til Kina!

Facing a bankrupt American, some pilots look to China for jobs

With American Airlines in bankruptcy, pilots have more reason to feel nervous about their careers. But China needs veteran pilots.

Pilots arrive and are being escorted to various rooms where Asian airlines are presenting details for employment at the All-China Job Fair being held at the Pan Am International Flight Academy on Thursday.

Ken Krizman felt so confident signing on as an American Airlines pilot in the late 1990s, he stopped recording his flight hours. Why fool with paperwork when he'd never have to apply for another job again?

"I thought I didn't need to keep a logbook anymore,'' said Krizman, who lives in San Francisco but flies for American out of Miami. "I thought I was starting my very last aviation job."

But on Thursday morning, the 52-year-old joined a throng of fellow pilots to consider a new career - as a Chinese airline pilot. A dozen Chinese carriers hope to fill hundreds of pilot jobs during a two-day job fair at a Doral aviation center, promising to reward veteran U.S. pilots with more money than they could earn living in the United States.

The opening hours of the All-China Job Fair captured the mix of promise and fear that looms over sagging economies in the West and the surge of China. Held inside a training center bearing the name of a defunct airline, the hiring expo paired more than 100 mostly middle-aged men with 20- and 30-something Chinese airline executives boasting of rapidly expanding routes and the privileged life of an American pilot in China.

"You get so many days off,'' Yang Dan, a recruiter for Okair in Tianjin, told about 20 U.S. pilots gathered in a small room in the Pan Am International Flight Academy. "You have plenty of time to take your family all over China. China is so big."

About 1,100 registered for the job fair that continues through Friday in Doral, then moves to Las Vegas for a third day, fair organizers said.

As American scrambles to reduce pilot pay as part of its bankruptcy plan, Chinese carriers are racing to accommodate surging demand for travel across the world's most populous country. That has led China to pursue veteran U.S. pilots with offers of higher pay and the job security that comes with an industry growing rapidly.

Ronghui Lang of Shenzen Airlines came to Doral with a quota of about 50 hires to feed an airline that saw its roster of pilots double in the past several years to nearly 500. But if Lang ends up with more promising candidates, he's ready to make more offers.

"We're looking for 46 pilots, but we'll take as many as we can get,'' said Lang, who introduced himself as "Ron" at the start of a seminar on Shenzen. A compensation summary listed a starting salary of $175,000 for contract workers. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics says the typical airline pilot in the United States earns about $116,000.